Cyberia

Riyadh Abdul Aziz is a blogger interested in the relationship between the web and society who works as a legal researcher for the government of Oman. He is interested in technology, intellectual property, and law. You can e-mail Riyadh at riyadh.aziz@apexmedia.co.om

The use of social media influencers for marketing campaigns is now a common practice in Oman by small and large businesses alike, and it is now more necessary than ever for the activities of these social media influencers to have some guidelines.

The restrictions that Omani ISPs impose on accessing VoIP services, such as WhatsApp calls and Skype, push users in Oman to seek unsafe tools to bypass the censorship that blocks these apps. Some of these circumvention tools might expose the personal data of Omani users to online criminals, hackers, and identity thieves.

The Ministry of Heritage and Culture has recently launched a digital audio library of traditional Omani folk music on SoundCloud which allows members of the public to download and reuse Omani music free of charge.

The National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI) has announced an upcoming National Open Data Symposium that will be held at the beginning of next month. This event is another indication that the Omani government is taking open data seriously, but more has to be done to encourage ministries to make their data freely available on the Internet in a useful manner.